The Bail-Reform Tool That Activists Want Abolished
When Tyler Hubbard was arrested last year in Ocean Township, New Jersey, he was 22 years old. He, in his own words, “got into a big fight” with his stepfather, “and it went somewhere it shouldn’t have.” He was arrested around midnight, charged with second-degree aggravated assault, and taken to the county jail. Hubbard waited there for roughly a day before he, along with about 10 others, was introduced to a pretrial case worker. “[That was when] they told us all our scores,” Hubbard remembered. “I was like a 2 and a 3, I believe.”
These scores were supposed to predict what Hubbard would do next if he were released from jail. They are a key component of New Jersey’s new pretrial system, which was revamped in early 2017 to essentially eliminate cash bail. In the first year, the reforms cut the state’s pretrial population by some 20 percent.
